Task-force to end tribal clashes deployed to southern Libya

A tribal taskforce has been sent to Libya’s southern town of Ubari with a view to ending renewed clashes between rival tribes, a local military source has said.

The taskforce -- members of which have been drawn from the Hasawna tribe -- was dispatched to Ubari on Saturday with a mandate to end ongoing clashes between Libya’s Tebu and Tuareg ethnic groups, the source told Anadolu Agency.

According to the same source, the move comes in line with a ceasefire agreement signed last November in Doha by Tebu and Tuareg representatives.

"The taskforce will set up security checkpoints along the road linking Ubari to the southwestern city of Sabha," the source said.

Last November’s ceasefire agreement ended more than a year of violent clashes between the two groups in which more than 300 people had been killed and some 2,000 injured, according to medical sources.

The deal, however, has been repeatedly breached by both sides.

The Tuareg -- a Berber people who largely adhere to a nomadic, pastoralist lifestyle -- live in the deserts of Libya, Algeria, Niger and Mali.

The Tebu, for their part, are a Nilotic people concentrated mainly in southern Libya, Niger and Chad.